Obama crowd: 1.8 million*

Obama wasn’t even sworn in yet, and we already had inflation.

While I could really care less how many people attended Barack Obama’s inauguration, there is an interesting story behind the head count, or rather, the lack thereof.

The National Park Service (NPS) conducted an estimate of Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March in 1995 and found that the march actually came well under one million people. Naturally, organizers cried racism to Congress — who promptly banned the NPS from conducting further estimates.

So back to Obama’s inauguration: the NPS went ahead and did another estimate. After all, this is historic. But this time, it was a bit less scientific — they just went with the Washington Post’s figure of 1.8 million. Presto! The biggest event in Washington, D.C.’s history.

But satellite imagery may deflate Obama’s head count. Experts at Jane’s Information Group figure between 1.3 and 1.7 million, and George Mason University professor of tourism puts the figure at much closer to 1 million.

The previous record was LBJ’s inauguration, with 1.2 million people. So most likely, it’s a new record anyway. Maybe Major League Baseball could give the record an asterisk, like Roger Maris’ former home run record. After all, the crowd acted more like a bunch of rowdy sports fans anyways.